Thursday, September 17, 2009

In terms of television, the 00’s will go down as the decade of anti-heroes, from Jack Bower to Tommy Gavin to Dexter Morgan, almost every major drama of the decade had a lead character that garnered major and minor awards were deeply flawed. The 10’s (and if we never came to a consensus of what to call the 00’s, what the frack do we call the next decade?) may very well be the rise of the anti-hero in sitcoms. If so, Showtime got the ball rolling with the pill popping Nurse Jackie this summer and NBC is jumping on the band wagon with Community.

The problem with Community, is where Bower at. el. typically go with the ends justify the means philosophy to to talk themselves into some of the bad things they do, the lead of Community, Joel McHale (The Soup), is just a humongous douche. McHale spends the whole first episode either trying to get out of doing any work getting a degree or getting into the pants of the resident hottie Gillian Jacobs (Choke). There are zero redeeming qualities to McHale here.

Luckily for Community the rest of the cast is stellar starting with comedy legend Chevy Chase (Fletch Lives) as a man after my own heart by being rich enough to just take classes for fun in his old age (something I would totally do if I were loaded). Breakout star watch goes to Allison Brie (Mad Men) as the perennial over-achiever who still manages to be a not well known by her peers including your token high school king turned Community College loser. Yvette Nicole Brown (Hotel for Dogs) and Danny Pudi (Road Trip - Beer Pong) also seem good for a few laughs. And even though he doesn’t show up in the first episode, the always funny Ken Jeong (Role Models) shows up as the crew’s Spanish teacher sometime this season.

Community airs Thursdays at 9:30 on NBC until October 8 when it moves to 8:00 on the same day. You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Community on iTunes or Amazon Video on Demand (see below):